That Away
by Kiyda
Summary: [Runaways] The kids go kaleidoscope, growing, experimenting, and discovering more about themselves than they'd like to know. Watch them swirl, blend, and collide as they all miss "the same imaginary place".


Runaways

That Away by Kiyda.

Chapter 1. Frou Frou - Let go

Deep down beneath all the rubble of problems and issues and severities, the kids were all right. The kids were the runaways, and in-between crimefighting and managing a life of their own, they were trying to piece together the normalties of their minds. So they were minding their own business, sitting on a sofa and watching TV, and at the moment, getting on with their lives underground when suddenly a question came to mind.

"Hey, what's today?" asked the clueless. The social misfit obvious didn't hear him or chose to ignore the question and continued to watch TV. He asked again.

"What's today, Gert?" asked the boy. She looked at him.

"What?"

"What's today? Monday, Wednesday, Thursday?" suggested the boy. The girl bit her lip.

"Um. Monday, November 1st, my birthday," she said. He freaked.

"WHAT! No way! Today's your birthday!" he panicked, suddenly sitting up on the couch.

"Yeah, I guess it is, Chase," she sighed.

"Karolina, did you hear that!" shouted Chase to the girl in the next room.

"What is it!"

The girl in violet glasses groaned. This is all she needed. More anxiety.

"Today is Gert's birthday!"

"Omg, really!"

Gertrude Yorkes was one of the few people in the world who saw it for its shadow. She was not known to be the most uplifting or positive person of the group. She didn't sugarcoat things or play it slow and steady. She was direct, and rude, and impolite, and annoying. But she was honest, and faithful, and caring, and righteous, she was bound for great and beautiful things. She didn't know this, of course; being a teenager, she found that her whole life maybe based upon shoving a hard reality into other people's faces. She didn't know where her life was going, what with psycho parents no longer living, being on the run from the police and media, and riddled with nightmares of watching her future self die of a villain not yet truly born. All this plagued her mind, and it was beginning to show.

"Whatever you guys..." muttered Gert as she got up and left the room. The blond boy woke and started after her.

"Hey!" He followed her down the hallway. "Why didn't you say anything earlier?"

Gert waved her hand over her shoulder.

"It's not like we could've done anything about it. And it doesn't really matter. It's just a birthday. More will come -"

"But it's your sixteenth birthday! That's like - a pretty big deal! Dude, you only turn sweet sixteen once!" exclaimed Chase. He followed her to her bedroom door.

"Once, and thank god, never again -"

"HEY."

Chase slammed his hands in quiet thump against the door frame above her head, trapping her. He gazed down at her with silent, peeved glare. Gert's smartaleck wit finally died gazing back up at him. Over the past few months, Chase had changed a lot and so had she. Things now were way different from when this who escapade began. And as he looked down at her with those big blue perverted eyes, she could only look away. For she still thought it to be unreal that a person who had seen the good of the world could ever love a person who had seen the worst of it. And as he touched her cheek, brushing past the fallen hair, all she could think of was how much she was going to miss his touch when she was dead, twenty years later.

"You know you mean a lot to me, babe," Chase confessed. He pressed his forehead against hers, gazing into her eyes. "I would do anything for you."

With closed eyes, she smiled. "You wouldn't do anything for me."

"Oh yeah? I bet you if you were dangling off of a cliff over a pit of rabid, man-eating snails, I would come and rescue you," he told her. She grinned evilly.

"And if I asked you to clean Old Lace's stables -"

"Okay, so I wouldn't do just anything for you," he submitted. He looked at her with puppydog eyes. "I want you to know I really love you."

Gert blushed a bright pink. Inside, her dying heart gave a miraculous leap for joy.

"I want you to know you're loved..." he whispered, brushing his lips against hers. And she replied accepting them.

It was a deep kiss from the bottom of their hearts, like two glowing candles in the deep dark ocean. Here they would linger forever.

Gert had never felt so not-alone. She reached for the back of his neck and held on a little longer. Her boyfriend rested his other hand against the small of her back, and now they had become the perfect image of two teens making out in a dark hallway.

Too bad, the littlest one is too young to see it.

"EWWW!" She played a disgusted face. "You guys are gross! Can't you guys get a room or something!"

Chase broke it and turned to look at her and say.

"Beat it, little dude," he told her. The eleven year-old cringed her face in rejection and ran off. Gert let go anyway and pulled away, feeling embarrassed and awkward.

"Um, yeah, Molly's right," Gert decided, drying her warm hands.

"She is? So you want to go get a room -"

"That's not what I meant!" snapped Gert, playfully elbowing Chase while smiling. "Geez, I meant, maybe we should keep things slow."

"What? No way," he disagreed. Chase was never a patient guy. He didn't like the idea of moving slow 'cause that meant things were going to end and not eventually get THERE. Although he didn't want things over and done with, he just wanted the best. Chase just wanted everything. All the time.

Gert folded her arms over her chest. "Slow," she said.

Chase was afraid she would say it like that. With the complete serious maturity of an adult. He sighed and made a complete depressing slump.

"Okaaaaaaaaay," he mumbled. He then looked at her and smiled. Gert blinked at him in wonder.

"What?"

"Nothing," he shook his head." I'm gonna go work out. So like be goooooood," He cooed, leaning in and kissing her forehead. She blushed slightly. And he left.

Gertrude sighed with relief and sadness. She opened her door and went into her room: a room that looked nothing like her old one. It was bare and blank and white. Yet the room carried one special feature of pictures taped to the wall. As she flopped down on the bed she watched them.

They were pictures of the gang, of her and Nico and Molly and Karolina and Chase. All 'cept a torn picture of a boy with brown hands. Half of the picture was ripped so that his face was missing, but that he stood with the other kids. Gert stared at that picture for the longest time.

"Alex."

His name brought a bitter taste in her mouth. She rolled over and sighed. She touched her face, the one Chase seemed to like a lot. She followed that hand over her stomach. That is where the wound will be when she dies, she told herself. That is where the wound will be.

She rolled over to her side, wondering what will it feel like. And then she closed her eyes and curled into a ball.

Gertrude was changing, inside and out, and it was beginning to show. She was getting taller, slimmer, and paler. Her acne was beginning to clear, and the violet dye in her hair was beginning to fade. Not only that, but she was getting smarter. She was less trusting than she used to be, now surrounded by a tall thick wall of imaginary brick that only crumbled in front of Chase now. And that's what worried her.

Despite her tough attitude, she was beginning to weaken. She felt that the Gertrude that her parents had raised was being to wither away with maturity. She wasn't so sure, as she used to be, that this was a good thing. She loved the old Gert. She loved how she used to be so courageous and rebellious. Now, all she did was hide behind her dinosaur, follow the orders of her gothic leader, and fall into the arms of a typical jock. Hell. She was turning into everything she hated.

Right?

Knock, Knock.

Gert didn't say anything. She was afraid it would ruin her own little world of thoughts by acknowledging the existence of outside forces.

Knock, Knock.

"Gert?" called the voice. "Are you in there?"

Gert groaned and sat up.

"Yeah, what is it?"

"The Staff of One tells me there's going to be a shoot and kidnap at Woodrow Highschool at 11:32 a.m. We don't know who's behind it, but you can bet it's a ransomer."

Gert was quiet, attentive, but thinking.

"...So what?"

"Sooooo, we need to plan ahead! That is if we want to safely get the kid out of there and seize the culprit without getting shot!"

The voice was quiet for a moment.

"Don't you care?"

Gertrude didn't say anything at first. She had to think about it.

"Yeah, fine. I care."

Meeting room.

Their gothic leader in black attire, laid out a magic blueprint of the school at the roundtable with her tall staff.

"So, Nico, what're we looking at again?" asked the long blond haired girl.

"Well, this is a blueprint of the school. The staff of one tells me the culprit should enter from the back entrance here -"

Nico pointed to the drawing of the double doors swung open.

"Now that person's target is in one of six rooms," she explained, highlighting them red with her magic touch.

"So we don't know who our buddy's after, huh?" wondered Gert, folding her arms over her chest. Nico shrugged.

"It could be any of the kids, as I said before, in these six rooms."

"Why only these six?" asked the blonde haired girl.

"Well, they seem to be the most obvious choices. Around 11, it should be lunch time, so no one will notice him, and according to the school's lunch schedule, these are the only six rooms that are still have class at 11:32 and closest to the back entrance," said Nico.

"Wow, brains, and looks!" exclaimed the blond haired girl.

"Elementary, my dear Karolina," Nico said with a modest smile. "But what I don't get is why the school only has two lunch schedules. Mine had at least three."

"That's 'cause it's a Private school," said Gert. Karolina and Nico both looked at

Gert peculiarly.

"How do you know?"

"'Cause I used to go there."

Next Chapter: Chapter 2. The Shins - Caring Creepy


End file.
